Years of the Republic of China 1913

() After the incident, Fang Zida hurriedly asked someone to check it. A few days later, the results of the calculation by a subsidiary of Zhongyang Bank were submitted, and Fang Zida became angry when he saw it.

Indeed, as Yang Du said, in the past few years, the casting of silver dollars has started from 247 billion yuan in the first year, and a total of 1285 billion yuan has been cast this year, of which the one-yuan silver dollar with the largest currency value accounts for 7%. Such a huge amount of currency supply should be able to meet commercial needs, but the actual results show that the silver dollars in circulation in the market only account for 40% of the total amount of money put in. Except for some local rich people who have a hobby of hiding money, more than 50% of the silver dollars actually disappeared. No trace, which can not but make people feel consternated.

After reading the report, Fang Zida immediately called Zhou Yuanliang and asked the Secret Service to check the matter immediately. It is necessary to find out the whereabouts of these silver dollars, otherwise the Zhongyang Bank will release a large number of silver dollars, and the market will inexplicably disappear nearly half of the currency , once there is a change, it will bring a major blow to the Chinese economy.

After Zhou Yuanliang received the order, he immediately arranged for police officers and generals, and the Zhongyang Bank cooperated with the investigation of the silver dollar incident.Ten days later, Zhou Yuanliang rushed to Fang Zida's office to report.

"Out of the country?"

"Yes sir, according to the survey, in Tianjin, Shanghai and Shanghai, the exchange volume of silver dollars has been particularly large in the past two years, but according to the statistical results, there is a huge difference between the amount of inflow and outflow of these two places. After inquiring about the customs, it is said that foreign nationals often bring silver dollars back to the country, so it can be seen that these disappeared silver dollars must have left the country. "

"Foreign nationals? Which countries are there?" Fang Zida frowned and asked.

"Britain, France, Germany, Tsarist Russia...but...the one with the most is Ri himself..."

"Crack!" Fang Zida slapped the table, the truth of the matter has been revealed, and he has fully understood what's going on so far.

Since the Japanese currency crisis, the Japanese domestic economy has been in a slump, which has led the Japanese government to forcibly implement the policy of replacing the old currency with the new currency and implementing foreign exchange controls.Although this decision temporarily stabilized the poor economic situation in Japan, it was also a stupid idea to kill one thousand enemies and injure eight hundred.

In order to recover the domestic economy as soon as possible, the best way is to take advantage of the opportunity of the European War to export a large number of products in exchange for funds. * Easy inconvenience, what's more, the severely damaged Japanese economy already relies heavily on the way of processing and re-exporting foreign resources, so the Japanese government is not optimistic about changing the current situation under the new economic policy.

But Ri himself has always been good at thinking, or to put it bluntly, he is full of bad water, always thinking about taking shortcuts and playing tricks.Since relying on domestic industry and commerce cannot change the economic situation in the short term, they set their sights on the Chinese market and came up with the idea of ​​silver dollars, the legal currency of the Chinese government.

Smuggling a large amount of silver dollars, using the dual-track monetary policy implemented by Japan, can obtain a huge price difference in the international market by changing hands.What's more, silver is not only a kind of currency, but also an indispensable main raw material in many industries.In this way, the domestic economic situation can be reversed in the simplest way, and it can also be used to attack opponents and disrupt the Chinese currency market. How could Ri himself let such a good thing go?

After thinking about the cause and effect, Fang Zida couldn't help but blame himself.It stands to reason that this kind of activity is not complicated, but he never expected that Ri himself would be so shameless.

There is another important reason for this, that is, China's customs are not in the hands of the Chinese themselves.Since 1854, the consulates of Britain, France, and the United States in Shanghai jointly negotiated with Su Songtai and Wu Jianzhang, and decided that each of the three countries would send a tax department to assist the Qing government in collecting tariffs.

Soon, this committee expanded to customs, shipping and even postal services. In 1859, Li Taitai, the British tax secretary, was appointed by the Qing local government as the general tax department and became the actual top leader of the Chinese customs. In 1861, this position was recognized by the Qing government fuzhong yang. From 1865, the General Taxation Department moved to Beijing, thus beginning the situation that the General Taxation Department of China Customs was dominated by foreigners.

In fact, although the foreign personnel in the Customs General Taxation Department have great powers, most of these personnel have good professional ethics, and their work ability and work efficiency are much higher than that of Chinese employees.This is also one of the main reasons why after the founding of the Zhengfu of the Republic of China, the rights of shipping and postal services were taken back, but foreigners were still allowed to remain in the tax department. Fang Zida also voted for this. In his opinion, instead of blindly driving these people away, Instead of recruiting a bunch of bureaucrats who only understand corruption and accept bribes but don't understand customs operations at all, it is better to continue to let these people serve the government.

But then again, these foreigners are not Chinese after all. Their work for China Customs is just like employees hired by a company. Although they do their best in daily work, they also have various selfish intentions. where.Especially in the limitation of customs tariffs, according to the agreement between the Manchu and Qing Dynasties and other countries, China's tariffs have been maintained at such a very low fixed rate, so that the tariffs that should have occupied a large part of national income now only account for a very small part.Moreover, in the General Tax Department, the people in charge are basically Westerners. From an emotional point of view, while working for the Chinese government, they are also biased towards Western countries, especially the United Kingdom, France and the United States. The loopholes in the customs were caused, and it was also the main reason why Ri himself took advantage of these loopholes to smuggle silver dollars boldly.

Fang Zida was furious because of what Ri himself did, but it is not so simple to cure this matter.Fang Zida, as the chief financial officer and the president of the Central Bank of China, is absolutely impossible to do such stupid things as Japan himself, such as forced foreign exchange control and prohibiting the circulation of silver dollars. If this is the case, the national economy must be thrown into chaos.Now, he can only start from two aspects. One is to adjust the conversion ratio between Japanese dollars and silver dollars through the Administration of Foreign Exchange to formulate measures for the foreign exchange control of the Japanese government, so as to increase the cost of smuggling silver dollars for the Japanese as much as possible.Secondly, it is to find a way at the customs, increase anti-smuggling efforts, prohibit large quantities of silver dollars from leaving the country, and formulate laws on the silver dollars carried by foreign nationals. A two-pronged approach will fundamentally solve this problem.

It is not difficult to achieve the first step, and Fang Zida's power can quickly plug this loophole, but it is not easy to achieve the latter step.The General Tax Department is beyond Fang Zida's control. This must be negotiated with the current Director of the General Tax Department, the British Sir Anglian. Only after he agrees can we work together to deal with this issue.

Fang Zida and Anglian had only met a few times at the reception, and had never really dealt with each other.Since he succeeded Pei Shikai as acting chief tax officer in 1911, the Chief Taxation Officer has been in charge of the Chief Taxation Department for seven full springs and autumns. It is not an exaggeration to say that he is the Supreme Emperor of China Customs, even Fang Zida wants to meet him It's not that easy either.

Three days later, according to the agreement, Fang Zida came to the General Tax Department not far from the Ministry of Finance, followed the uniformed personnel to the corridor, took the elevator to the top floor, and finally met the customs officer in the luxurious office occupying an entire floor. Overlord - Sir Anglian, Chief Revenue Officer

Sir Anglian was a Scotchman, not tall and not fat, with a handsome mustache, who looked more like a merchant than a nobleman.

Seeing Fang Zida coming, Sir Anglian stood up to greet him with a smile. After the two exchanged casual greetings, Sir Anglian invited Fang Zida to sit down in the living room and asked whether he should drink or tea.

Afterwards, after the servant served the black tea, the host and the guest smoked cigars and talked about the weather today...hahaha... and other nonsense, Fang Zida changed the topic to the purpose of today's visit.

"Your Excellency, I plan to have the Ministry of Finance cooperate with the General Tax Department to carry out a comprehensive operation on the issue of customs anti-smuggling. What do you think?"

"Anti-smuggling? Is this necessary?" Sir Anglian frowned slightly, shook his head and said with a smile: "Besides, this issue seems to be a matter for our General Tax Department. In the report below, Mr. Fang, have you crossed the line by doing so?"

"This is your Excellency..." Fang Zida treated each other frankly, and talked to Sir Anglian about the rapid development of China's industry and commerce in recent years, and the rapid increase in imports and exports, and the inevitable consequences that followed. Smuggling will occur.

In order to protect national tariff interests and legitimate corporate interests, and combat smuggling, the Ministry of Finance has decided to take an action against the current smuggling phenomenon. Of course, this must be agreed and assisted by the General Taxation Department.The Ministry of Finance assures that this action will not affect the work of the General Tax Department, and after this action, it is believed that it will bring greater results to the work of the General Tax Department. This is a win-win proposal. I hope Sir Anglian able to agree.

As for the silver dollar issue, Fang Zida didn't talk about it, mainly because he was worried that if the news leaked from the other party, it would affect his next arrangement.In Fang Zida's opinion, this proposal is very beneficial to both the Ministry of Finance and the General Taxation Department. By eliminating smuggling and increasing tariffs, Sir Anglian can not only get results, but also bring him more financial benefits. .

But it never occurred to him that the arrogance of the British was unreasonable.After listening to Fang Zida's words, Sir Anglian rejected his request without even thinking about it, and arrogantly replied that Fang Zida was in charge of all the customs work, and did not need the Ministry of Finance or even the Chinese government to intervene. It is necessary to extract the tariff rate from the General Tax Department in accordance with the agreement.Not to mention that he didn't receive any reports on smuggling from below, even if there was such a thing as smuggling, it was still the work of the Chief Taxation Department and had nothing to do with Fang Zida.

He patiently spoke good words to Sir Anglian for a long time, but the guy on the other side seemed to have become determined after eating Bing Tuo, despite Fang Zida's rhetoric, the only answer he had was "no".In the end, Fang Zida with a livid face had no choice but to get up and leave, and walked out of the luxuriously decorated General Taxation Department, Fang Zida sneered in his heart.

"Damn it! Shame on your face, let me wait and see!"